Footprinting: What Is It, Who Should Do It, and Why?

Are you footprinting your systems? Or is an attacker doing it for you? Yes, footprinting can be good for you just like scanning. The process of footprinting is the first step in information gathering of hackers. To perform or thwart a successful attack, one needs to gather information. The hacker's intention is to learn about all aspects of the perspective organization's security posture, profile of their Intranet, remote access capabilities, and intranet/extranet presence (Scambray, McClure, and Kurtz 2001). Footprinting is a necessary evil. What does that mean? Successful hackers are building their information database about your company's security weaknesses. Wouldn't be nice to know these weaknesses in advance to take proper action? Yes, it would be nice. Therefore, security personnel need to add footprinting to their already long task list. One has to remember that an organization's security is a process, not a technology. A good security system provides multiple layers of security.